The last time I tried installing Plasma 6 in a VM with OpenSUSE Krypton, I failed to actually install Plasma 6 for development use. Recently I noticed a tip on the KDE Wiki and managed to get it working.

Install via LiveCD

Download OpenSUSE Krypton at:
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/?P=*Krypton.*.iso

Even though the LiveCD runs Plasma 6, if you run the installation with the default setup it will install Plasma 5.

On the Plasma 6 wiki entry on community.kde.org, it mentions you need to change the installed Desktop Environment.

At the last step (installation summary), select “Software” and tick “KDE Plasma 6 Desktop Base”.



First Login

Another issue I found is that by default, the user will login to the “IceWM” Desktop Environment instead of “Plasma (Wayland)”.

So click the App Launcher button in the bottom-left of the IceWM panel, then click Logout.

At the bottom-left of the SDDM Login Screen is a selector drop down to select the desktop environment you login to.

However if you have AutoLogin enabled then you will need to open up KDE’s System Settings.

Search for “Login Screen (SDDM)” under “Colors & Themes”.

Click on the “Behavior” button.

Then change from (System Default) to Plasma (Wayland)

If you know how to change the system default please let me know.

Improving the VM Experience

Remove grub timeout

By default OpenSUSE will wait 8 seconds for you to select which boot drive you want.

  • Search for “YaST” in the App Launcher
  • Click “Boot Loader”
  • Click the “Bootloader Options” tab
  • Change “Timeout in Seconds” from 8 to 0

Disable the lock screen

First open up KDE’s “System Settings”.

Under “Screen Locking” change “Lock screen automatically” from 5 minutes to Never. Also uncheck “Lock after waking from sleep”.

Finally, under “Power Management” uncheck “Turn off screen”.

Virt-Manager Tips

VM Desktop Shortcut

To quickly launch a VM from the App Launcher:

  • Open kmenuedit (Right click App Launcher Icon > Edit Application)
  • Under “Lost & Found” > Add New Item
    • Name: VM Krypton
    • Program: /usr/bin/virt-manager
    • Command-Line Arguments: --connect qemu:///system --show-domain-console OpensuseKrypton (note that OpensuseKrypton must be the exact name of the virtual machine in Virt-Manager)
    • Icon (empty button right of the “Name” text field): openSUSE-distributor-logo
  • Save

VM Shared Directory

To quickly develop plasma 6 widget code in the host, then test in the VM.

  • Virtual Machine > Details Tab
  • Memory > Check Shared Memory
  • Add Hardware > Filesystem
    • Driver: virtiofs
    • Source Path:
      • Create a pool at ~/Code/plasmoid-tiledmenu
      • Then select ~/Code/plasmoid-tiledmenu/package for the Source Path
    • Target Path: plasmoid_tiledmenu (Note that this isn’t a filepath but an id that we use to mount in /etc/fstab later)
    • Finish
  • Start the VM
  • Open up the terminal (Konsole)
  • EDITOR=nano sudoedit /etc/fstab
    • Add the following line at the bottom. 
      plasmoid_tiledmenu	/home/tester/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/com.github.zren.tiledmenu	virtiofs	rw,noatime,_netdev	0	2
    • https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab
    • Note to use TAB to separate instead of spaces.
    • rw,noatime,_netdev means Read/Write, ignore access times, and treat this as a Network Device.
    • 0 2 is for <dump> <fsck>. I’m not entirely sure I should use 2. I should probably use 0 to disable the checks.
      • <dump> is checked by the dump utility. This field is usually set to 0, which disables the check.
      • <fsck> sets the order for file system checks at boot time; see fsck. For the root device it should be 1. For other partitions it should be 2, or 0 to disable checking.
    • Hit Ctrl+X then Y then Enter to save your changes in the Nano terminal text editor.
  • Create the /home/tester/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/com.github.zren.tiledmenu/ folders if they do not currently exist. Make sure it’s an empty folder as well.
  • Restart the VM.

You should now have the package folder of your widget linked as an installed widget in your Plasma 6 VM which makes it easy to test.